SILMARILLION REFERENCE - Call for Volunteers

Bre

Bre

Active Member
The Silmarillion is a big story with lots of characters, locations, and items, all with their own unique attributes, spanning not just the text of The Silmarillion itself, but all the draft texts as well.

To make things more simple, and to provide adequate reference for all designers and artists involved in the Silmarillion Film Project, we are aiming to create a document which provides organized information using direct sources from the various texts, with a focus on passages that provide information concerning the physical and visual attributes of all those characters, locations, and items.

I began this endeavor over a year ago on my own, but it a daunting task when attempted solo. However, together we could complete it no time.

Others on the forums have already expressed interest in creating such a document, so I figured it was time to launch an official call for volunteers.

I have uploaded what we have so far to Google Drive, along with further volunteer instructions and a chart depicting our progress:

Please let me know in this thread whether or not you are interested in volunteering, upon which time I will provide you with an assignment and grant you editor permissions on whichever document you'll be working on.
 
Hey, I just wanted to ask for clarification about what this project is about...from what I understand, we are wanting to create a compilation of all visual descriptions of pretty much anything (characters, items, places) that occur in the Silmarillion and HoME series? So basically, if I wanted to know what Maedhros looks like, I would look up the appropriate section in our handy document, and all visual descriptions of Maedhros (from anywhere in S or HoME) would be listed there?

...or are we wanting more than just visual descriptions? If so, what kinds of descriptions are we looking for? (This is assuming that we're NOT just creating an index of every single reference to the given subject....or are we?)

Sorry, hope my questions make some level of sense! I'm interested in helping out with this, but wanted to make sure I understand what it is, first.
 
MatthewW said:
Hey, I just wanted to ask for clarification about what this project is about...from what I understand, we are wanting to create a compilation of all visual descriptions of pretty much anything (characters, items, places) that occur in the Silmarillion and HoME series? So basically, if I wanted to know what Maedhros looks like, I would look up the appropriate section in our handy document, and all visual descriptions of Maedhros (from anywhere in S or HoME) would be listed there?
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Yeah that's basically it.

There would be some additional information that would work more like indirect visual descriptions too though. For example, there's a line about the Noldor and Sindar mingling in the Nortn lands and then another later on about the Teleri at Falas merging with the Noldor, who all go on to inhabit Gondolin; that information helps tell us that we should be envisioning mixed raced elves for those regions. Also things like swan imagery popping up for various characters/cultures, so that people would know to incorporate swan imagery into their designs. But yeah, it's mostly going be, this character has red hair, this character has swarthy skin, that sword is back, etc.

And don't worry about asking, I was worried I might not be clear enough when I set out to explain this project.
 
Ah. Now I have found the "Instructions" document in the Google Drive folder, and I feel somewhat sheepish. It appears that all of my questions have been answered. :)

Well, count me in as interested in helping out. What shall I do next?
 
MatthewW said:
Well, count me in as interested in helping out. What shall I do next?
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Just PM me with your email and I'll give you editor access to the docs we have up on Google Drive right now, and pick a book you want to be in charge of mining.

As of now I've finish going through The Silmarillion, am about halfway through HoME Vol. 1, and I will probably tackled Vol. 2 as well since it is fairly descriptive heavy and I don't want to scare any potential volunteers off with it. However, everything else is currently open (I've crossed off Vol 6-8 because those are the LotR drafts and I if there is First Age information in them I can't remember), so that includes Vol. 3-5,9-12, CoH, and UT.

In terms of work pacing, I'd recommend just doing one keyword search a night or every other night (or even every two nights or so) using the list of keywords at the bottom of the Instructions doc.
 
Hi Bre,
I'll be glad to pitch in to help. It is times like this that I am grateful that all Tolkien's works are indexed. I'll send you my email.
 
Just so everyone knows, these text searches are done using ctrl+f and PDFs of the books. I'm not asking anyone to have to go page by page or through the index of a physical copy (that would be cruel and unusual punishment).

Later on, once the searches are complete, physical copies will be needed, but that's just for making sure the correct page numbers are used when sourcing since the majority PDFs don't have pages numbers.
 
Hello, Bre! Really good idea—had you thought of creating a Silm Film Wiki to keep this all organized? It might make things far more easy to search during planning. Each entry could have a section with all of this information inside of it. Just a thought!
 
Kyle Fox said:
Hello, Bre! Really good idea—had you thought of creating a Silm Film Wiki to keep this all organized? It might make things far more easy to search during planning. Each entry could have a section with all of this information inside of it. Just a thought!
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In the end, once it's all done, it would be a good idea to have some sort of searchable database... though that would require an extra layer of metadata work. However, I don't really think wiki would be the right platform, it might have custom code or something else.
 
I'd be happy to volunteer, Bre, if you still need volunteers.
This seems like a really useful and important piece of the project.
 
Sue Giffard said:
I'd be happy to volunteer, Bre, if you still need volunteers.
This seems like a really useful and important piece of the project.
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Sure thing, just send me you're email through PM, and I'll add you to the Google Drive folder where all this is happening. Once there just click on the Instructions doc, read, and then choose an assignment.
 
Thanks, Bre. Trying to find the PM link on this forum, but I haven't figured it out yet. I see you're online now, could you please tell me where to go to PM you?
 
Is this still a project that you folks intend to complete? It appears to have been abandoned unfinished. I private-messaged Bre volunteering, and then saw that nobody has done anything on this project since 2016 and Bre hasn't posted in months.
 
Hi Faelivrin,
I did some work on my volume, but life took over for a while, and when I went back to check in I noticed that there had been no progress for quite a while. Because of other commitments I could only get moving again on this at the end of February, but if there is a belief/feeling that this would be a useful resource for people working on the Silmfilm project, I'd be happy to pick up in February where I left off.
Sue
 
I think any and all such references would be valuable.

Can I can even contribute if Bre doesn't give me editing privileges on those Google docs? It seems not...


I might as well post this question where others can reply:

I'm wondering how to handle a text like "Finwe's Descendants". That particular text is, in its entirety, nothing but detailed descriptions of Finwe and his family -- appearance, personalities, name meanings. I could leave out descriptions of their personalities except those are important... basically unless I paraphrase it would be plagiarism to quote all the relevant parts of this particular text...
 
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Bre has locked all the documents so they can't be edited. So, nobody can volunteer for this unless she returns.

I have my own compilation of character appearance, here. I did not cite references but I am pretty certain every statement there was taken directly from the primary texts. It includes appearance references for entire races and kindreds, in addition to individual characters. I included beings such as Ents and Dragons and Ainur as well. The word fana refers to the form or shape that an Ainu wears. The first half is divided by race, the second by physical traits.

The link above is to my whole Arda folder on Google Docs, because I occasionally update a doc when I find more info and that may break any direct link I try to give to the specific doc. Character Appearance is the doc I'm referring to on this post.
 
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